


Around

by skulls_and_stripes



Category: BoJack Horseman
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Murder, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:20:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24503767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skulls_and_stripes/pseuds/skulls_and_stripes
Summary: He got careless. He got sloppy. He allowed himself to think of immediate satisfaction over the long-term fate of his sitcom, and now he was paying the price. Herb Kazzaz lost his chance at fame, his sitcom, and worst of all, his best friend -- he lost everything, and he couldn't deny that it was his fault.But hey, that's the 80s for you, huh?
Relationships: Bojack Horseman & Herb Kazzaz
Comments: 11
Kudos: 33





	1. Broken Still

He’s frozen. He’s absolutely sure of that. It’s a bright and sunny day, in California’s September, the weather only just starting to cool down after the summer, and yet he is  _ frozen.  _ He’s only vaguely aware of his surroundings, of the eulogy washing over him, the barely-audible sobs in the background. The only thing he can really focus on is his own heavy breathing, barely holding back a scream.

He wants to  _ scream.  _ He wants to throw a tantrum and yell and tear his hair out and just generally make a scene. He wants to rant to anyone who will listen about how  _ this never should have happened,  _ about how  _ this isn’t fair,  _ about how  _ he did everything he could. _

But, that would be  _ disrespectful _ . So instead, he takes another deep, shuddering breath, and sips from his drink. God knows where he’d be without that drink. Probably bawling like a baby on the floor. The idea actually sounds pretty appealing, but, again,  _ disrespectful. _

He’s not sure why he cares so much, really. The man’s legacy has already been pretty thoroughly disrespected. But he still stands there, unmoving, leaning against a wall because his legs are shaking so badly he feels like he’s about to collapse into an ungraceful heap on the floor, and doesn’t scream.

He doesn’t even notice when Charlotte leaves. Well, he notices, but he doesn’t  _ notice.  _ Physically, yes, he sees her exit, and he consciously knows that she’s left the room now, but it doesn’t  _ register  _ emotionally. He doesn’t feel an impulse to run after her, or even a vague sense of  _ what are you doing, she came all the way back to California for the funeral and you’re not even checking if she’s alright?!.  _ He just stays there, breathing deeply, and tries to tell himself that there is  _ nothing  _ he could have done that would have prevented this.

* * *

Herb continued to pace around, waving around a single rough storyboard while the others were forgotten on his desk, the tap dancing from the room immediately above ringing through the office walls. “I’m telling you,  _ this  _ is the most important thing right now.”

BoJack raised an eyebrow. “... _ That’s  _ the most important thing right now? Not, I don’t know, the sitcom you’re making that’s currently in pre-production in 1986, the year which it currently is?”

“Mm-hmm,” said Herb stubbornly. “The  _ most  _ important thing to me, right now, is that the Knicks win.” 

“...I see.”

“I’m serious! If the Knicks don’t win in 1986, which is the current year, I’m going to kill myself.”

His eyes widened. “Woah! That seems drastic.” He stared at Herb, shocked and concerned, for a few moments before realising he was joking. “Besides, I know you. I’m pretty sure you’d just get into baseball or something.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Still, though! They have  _ got  _ to win.”

“Ugh, why do you care about them anyway?” He took it upon himself to take a seat at Herb’s desk, since Herb himself was busy pacing at the moment, and then decided to further overstay his welcome by putting his feet on the table unnecessarily. “I mean, you’re not even playing. You’re just watching a bunch of people you don’t know play, and then getting happy when they win. If you’re going to be into basketball, could you at least, you know, play basketball?”

“I  _ do!  _ Jesus, BJ, can’t I enjoy something in multiple ways? And get your shoes off my desk.”

BoJack stared at him. “... _ You  _ play basketball?”

“Yeah. Not very well, as you can imagine.” He waited a moment, then clicked his teeth irritably. “Go ahead, say it.”

“Say what?”

“Some uncreative joke where the punchline is that I’m short. I guarantee, there’s nothing you can think of that I haven’t heard before.”

BoJack thought for a moment. “What’s the weather like down there?”

_ “That’s  _ the best you’ve got?” 

“Hey, I’m sure I’ll think of something better soon.” He leaned back in the chair. “I think the last time I played basketball was probably, what, 1978?” 

Herb’s eyes widened. “Seriously?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, physical ed wasn’t compulsory in my high school, so I didn’t do it. I did a couple after-school sports but only so I’d have an excuse to not be at home.” He shuddered. “I’d probably be shit if I tried to play basketball now. Then again, I could probably beat  _ you.” _

Herb smirked. “Wanna bet?”

“Yeah, sure, I bet I could beat a goddamned  _ dwarf  _ at a game that you basically win by being tall.”

“I’m not  _ that  _ short! I’m serious, I’m actually pretty good.” He stopped pacing and leaned against a wall. “We should play a game on the weekend. You know, one-on-one, I’ve got a hoop we can use in my yard.”

BoJack rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure.”

* * *

It takes him a long time to properly realise that Charlotte’s exited the room. He takes a final sip from his drink, which is still over half full, then leaves it on a chair and slips away unnoticed. He finds her leaning against the wall in a hallway outside. “...Hey.”

She looks up. “Hey.” 

“You’re not good at funerals, are you?”

“Crying ruins my makeup.” She takes a step toward him. “How are you holding up?”

“Okay, I guess.” He leans on the wall next to her. “Feel like shit, though.”

“Because your best friend is dead?” 

“No, because the weather’s a little humid.” Without hesitation he nudges her in the ribs, perhaps a little harder than he should, but she takes it in stride.  _ “Yes,  _ because my best friend is dead!”

“Sorry.”

_ “God.”  _ He swings his head back and lets it hit the wall. “You know, I remember when I first found out I was getting my own sitcom.”

“Must have been the best moment in your life.”

“Oh, it was.” When he looks back on his life, he tends to imagine it as a series of scenes, like in the sitcom that he dreamed of for as long as he could remember. But there are some moments, like  _ that  _ moment at Griffith Park, that he can only see as an image, unmoving, when it felt like everything was just  _ frozen  _ for a second. A still image. A photograph.

Now when he looks back on it, the photograph is irrevocably covered by a cracked glass frame.

“Not anymore, though?”

“So much has happened since then. It hurts just to look back on it.” He frowns. “I mean, there’s nothing I could have done, right?”

Charlotte looks at him, perhaps a little amused. “Well, I mean, you  _ were  _ his best friend.”

“Yeah, but -- It’s not my fault.” He’s not sure who he’s trying to convince. “I couldn’t have done anything. It’s not my fault.” His face falls. “I still feel like it is.”

* * *

His rough scripts were once again forgotten on the desk in favour of nudging BoJack in the ribs. “I still can’t believe I beat you on the weekend.” 

“Yeah, I know, I suck at basketball.” He crossed his arms stubbornly. “Don’t let it get to your head.”

“Oh, I am  _ absolutely  _ going to let it get to my head.”

“Figures. It’s pretty easy for shit to get to your head. I guess it’s not exactly a long journey.”

“...Wow, I hadn’t actually heard that one before.” He smirked. “You know, you’d be way better at basketball if you tried actually, I don’t know,  _ catching the ball.” _

“Ugh, ball games are stupid anyway.” He took a step away from Herb and uncrossed his arms in favour of gesturing defensively. “It’s like, people are throwing objects at you hard enough to actually  _ hurt,  _ and you’re  _ not  _ meant to get out of the way? People who play basketball have  _ no  _ sense of self-preservation.”

“Nice one. I should put that in an episode.”

“No, I’m serious! It’s  _ so  _ stupid. Stupider than me, heh.” His face fell.

Herb frowned. “You okay?”

“What? Yeah. Just -- Yeah. I’m fine.”

Herb narrowed his eyes.

“Just… I’m visiting my parents in a few weeks and I’m anxious, is all.” 

“Anxious?” His smirk widened. “What, are your parents evil overlords or something, or do you just need to grow a pair?”

“...I just need to grow a pair.” He sighed. “It’s just -- I haven’t told them, yet. About the sitcom. And they’ve always had really high standards for me, and, I don’t know, I’m worried they won’t expect it to be big.”

“But it  _ is  _ gonna be big. And even if they don’t get it at first, they’re gonna be kicking themselves when we’re  _ famous!”  _ He grinned. “Besides, does it matter, really? I mean, even if this ends up being a flop -- which it won’t -- they’re your  _ family _ . They’ll stick by you no matter what, right?”

“...Yeah,” said BoJack finally. “Yeah, just like  _ I’ll  _ stick by  _ you  _ no matter what.”

* * *

“There’s no point in blaming yourself.”

“Yeah, but I still do.” He shuts his eyes for just a second, taking a deep breath. “And, I mean, I’m not wrong, am I? It  _ was  _ my fault. I was the only one who was in a position to save him, and I didn’t.” 

Charlotte remains silent.

“So how have you been?” he asks hollowly, opening his eyes and straightening up. “Still living in Maine?”

“Yeah, but I’m thinking about moving to New Mexico.”

“Moving to New Mexico? In 1986, which is the year that it currently is?” He stares at her. “I feel like you only just moved to Maine.”

“Oh, who knows? Maybe I’ll try the whole country before I decide where I want to spend my whole life. We’re still young, we have time.”

“But you’re never going back to L.A.?”

“...Nope.”

He hesitates. “Hey, Charlotte?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you still think Hollywood’s a tar pit?”

“Well,  _ yeah.”  _ She gestures toward the funeral room. “I mean, how could I not? He’s  _ dead.” _

He remains silent for a long time, then takes a deep breath and bursts into tears.

* * *

He sneezed again and Herb couldn’t help but cringe. “BJ, just go home.” 

BoJack shook his head stubbornly. “It’s just allergies,” he insisted, rubbing his nose on his arm.

“Allergies to what? We’re inside.”

“I’m allergic to... tap dancing.”

Herb narrowed his eyes.

“Okay, fine, I’m sick. But I mean, I can’t just  _ leave!  _ You’re giving me a sitcom, it’s the least I can do.”

“The least you can do is sneeze all over my office and get me sick? Just take a sick day. How’d you get sick, anyway?”

BoJack sniffled and raised a hand to rub his eyes. “I was out drinking the other night and this random guy at the bar dared me to stand outside in the rain for half an hour, so I did.”

“That’ll do it.” 

“Ugh, it was  _ so  _ stupid. And now my eye’s itchy!” He clawed at the corner of his eye irritably. “Ugh, why does my eye hurt so much?”

“Uh, because you’re sick?”

“No, that can’t be it.”

“...Because you’re really aggressively scratching it?” 

“No, I think my eyes are just cursed.”

Herb raised an eyebrow at him, frowning. He was actually trying to get some work done today, which was a rare occurrence because he spent most of his work time having fun with BoJack, and this was kind of distracting. “Maybe if you keep scratching it like that, your eyes will end up watering and that’ll help.”

BoJack froze.

“...Uh, BJ?”

BoJack stared at him with wide eyes for a long moment, then waved a hand dismissively and scoffed. “What, you think I’m just going to  _ cry  _ so you can be mad at me?”

“...What?”

“I’m not so easily fooled.”

* * *

He wipes his eyes and tries to take a deep breath. “God, I can’t believe this is happening.”

“Neither can I.” She places a hand on his shoulder. “But, you know it’s normal to be upset right now.”

“Yeah. I know.” He sniffles. “I just -- I wish I could have done everything  _ differently,  _ you know? I wish there was some way I could have looked out for him.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

He shuts his eyes again. His mind flashes back to the  _ moment  _ in Griffith Park, the still frame in his head when everything  _ froze.  _ When the whole world was ahead of him, when he was  _ sure  _ he was going to be rich and famous and  _ happy.  _ He remembers vaguely, at the time, wishing he could just stay in that frozen moment forever -- but he couldn’t, and so he continued with his life. Now he couldn’t go back to that frame if he tried. Even the memory is broken. A broken still.

“It just, it feels so  _ unfair,”  _ he continues. “He should have had his whole life ahead of him. This shouldn’t have happened.” 

She nods. “His life shouldn’t have been cut so short.”

“Well, that’s how it is, huh?” He forces a chuckle. “The good die young.”

Charlotte just raises a slightly amused eyebrow at him and says, “I wouldn’t exactly refer to BoJack as  _ good,  _ Herb.”

* * *

He carelessly brushed aside a loose draft of an episode about the Armenian genocide. “So, you know what I’m gonna do when I’m rich and famous?”

Herb sighed and tried to act like he hadn’t heard this exact rant at least four times already. “What?”

He took a pen, which belonged to Herb, from the desk and started clicking it aggressively. “Well, first, I’m gonna visit Charlotte in Maine. Except, you know what I’m gonna buy, while I’m there?”

“What?”

“A  _ boat.  _ And I’ll leave the boat in Charlotte’s driveway, so whenever I want to visit I can just stay in my boat.”

“...Yeah, I feel like Charlotte might not want you to leave a boat in her driveway indefinitely.”

“And  _ then,  _ I’ll buy a house with a  _ pool.  _ So whenever I want to swim, I’ll just  _ swim,  _ in my own goddamn yard, and -- oh, shit.” He stared at the hand holding the pen, which was now covered in ink. “Oh  _ shit,  _ it’s on my sleeve.”

Herb looked up and saw the stain. “You can probably wash it out if you do it before it’s dried.”

BoJack didn’t need telling twice; within seconds he was up, dashing out of the room while trying to take his jacket off. When he returned, he was soaking wet, and the only trace of his pen misadventure was a grey tint in his sleeve. Despite this, he was still whining. “I’m  _ screwed.” _

“It’s just a shirt.”

“I was planning to wear this shirt when I visit my parents on the weekend! And since it’s Monday now, as you know, I only have a week to wash the ink out.”

“...So?” asked Herb. “Just wear a different shirt.”

BoJack looked at him like he was an idiot. “This is the first time I’m going to San Francisco since I moved out. If I don’t look good, my mom’s gonna  _ kill  _ me.”

Herb raised an eyebrow. “...Aren’t you twenty-two?”

* * *

He wipes his eyes. “God, we should go back in. His family’s probably judging us.”

“...You think  _ they’ve  _ got room to judge us?” Charlotte chokes, but she takes a deep breath and walks back into the funeral room anyway. Herb follows her. He looks for the chair that he left his drink on, but it’s nowhere to be found, so he just sits down next to Charlotte and looks up.

The man giving the eulogy is a grey horse, with a large white stripe down the middle of his face and a pink spot on his muzzle. It’s kind of odd that this is the first time he’s ever seeing BoJack’s father, he thinks vaguely. Well, BoJack never met his parents either, but, well, he always assumed his first sight of the Horsemans would be proud audience members in the recording of the sitcom that would make them both famous. 

There was evidence to the contrary, and with the power of hindsight he can see that now, but he still always liked to think of BoJack’s parents as this  _ loving  _ couple, that maybe had high standards and maybe pushed him a little too hard but it was because they  _ knew  _ he would do great things, and when the sitcom aired, they would be  _ proud. _

He supposes that just goes to show that when you view the whole world through rose-coloured glasses, all the red flags just look like flags.

Butterscotch Horseman continues to rant. 

“BoJack would hate it if he knew that I spent so much time at his funeral talking about my work-in-progress novel. Or maybe he’d think it’s his fault, for not giving me reason to respect him. Who knows? Anyway, I’m not one for speeches. My wife was always going to give the speech if this happened, but... I’m not gonna stand up here and pretend I ever understood how BoJack was meant to please me, even though so much of his short life has probably been wasted in vain attempts to figure it out. And now we’re never going to know, because his mother drowned him in her bathtub.”

* * *

He was just sort of standing there, and it was hard to tell why. He had an excuse to leave some half an hour ago, and by now it was probably veering into “sorry I’m late, I was staring at a wall blankly in my friend’s office” territory. He should have been jumping at the chance to go home early, to get away from the incessant tap dancing and stress that lingered in Herb’s office. Instead, BoJack lingered.

“What are you still doing here?” Herb asked, frowning. “I thought you had to go home early today so you can drive to your parents’ house.”

“...Yeah,” said BoJack uncertainly. “Since, as you know, I’m visiting them this weekend and it’s currently Friday. I just, well…” He gestured vaguely. “I don’t want to leave you with all the work, you know?”

“Don’t worry about it.” He waved a hand dismissively. “We’re actually almost done. Production should be in full swing by next year.”

“...Wow.” His eyes lit up. His hands clasped together just in front of his chest. He looked almost childlike in his excitement. For just a few moments, it was like BoJack Horseman was a kid again. “When I was a kid, if you’d told me I was getting my own sitcom, I’d never have believed it. And now I’ve done it, and…”

His face fell. His hands dropped to his sides. He was previously leaning against a wall, but now he seemed to slide down it, his knees buckling. In an instant he had moved from his childlike excitement to a strange sort of vulnerability, the type that makes you want to protect hurt children. “...Herb, I don’t like  _ anything  _ about me.”

Herb’s frown deepened. “Huh?” He took a step forward, wanting to place a reassuring hand on his friend’s shoulder, but he moved just a little  _ too  _ fast and BoJack flinched badly, cowering where he stood and visibly trying to make himself look as small and non-threatening as possible. He was silent for a long time, but every part of his body language was  _ screaming,  _ screaming  _ please don’t hurt me. _

He finally spoke up. “None of this is  _ me.”  _ He was staring down at his own shaking hands. “This body isn’t me, this office isn’t me --”

“This is  _ my  _ office.”

“The only reason I’m wearing this shirt is because my mom said she’d buy me a meal if I looked nice.” He pulled and tugged at the fabric of his clothes like he wanted to get away from it. “And I don’t even want her to buy me food! I just liked that someone was willing to put up with me for half an hour…”

“Put up with you?” asked Herb, frowning deeply. He knew that BoJack’s self-esteem wasn’t exactly through the roof, and that underneath all the bragging and plastered-on confidence his humour was  _ very  _ self-deprecating once you got to know him, but there was a  _ huge  _ difference between having the humility to make a joke at his own expense and having a damn near  _ meltdown  _ over a shirt and a hypothetical free meal, prompted by seemingly  _ nothing.  _ “BJ, I don’t understand.”

It was like he couldn’t even hear him. “What am I supposed to do? I don’t know what to do.” His voice was breaking by now. “Am I doomed? Are you doomed? Are we all  _ doomed?” _

“...BJ, nobody’s  _ doomed,  _ but you’re kind of scaring me right now and I want to know what’s going on.” 

BoJack opened his mouth like he was about to say something, then immediately closed it like he expected Herb to hit him if he dared say a word. He just  _ stood  _ there, leaning against the wall, trembling from head to toe, staring at Herb with wide, pleading eyes.

Then, he straightened up.

“I’d better go.” He sounded like he had either just finished crying or was just about to start. “My parents are gonna be pissed if I’m late.” 

“Uh, yeah, I don’t want to make you late.” His frown deepened. “Are you gonna be okay?”

BoJack didn’t answer.

* * *

He hesitates, then lets his hand fall into Charlotte’s, fingers intertwined. It’s awkward. He knows he feels nothing toward her, and she knows that too, but they’re still, well,  _ exes.  _ And, well, they had always intended to stay in touch, but they also intended to take a  _ break,  _ maybe go a few months without speaking. Which, in retrospect, was a stupid idea. How would they rebuild a normal, non-awkward friendship when their last one-on-one interaction consisted mainly of Herb having a breakdown on Charlotte’s living room floor because he realised why it was  _ never going to work? _

Then again, how are they meant to rebuild a normal, non-awkward friendship when their last one-on-one interaction is at a funeral?

Butterscotch, still giving his eulogy, has once again gone off into a self-centered tangent that barely relates to his dead son -- you’d think that’d be all he can think about, God knows it’s all Herb’s thinking about right now, but apparently he has the mental energy to rant about shampoo and his book and goddamn  _ churros --  _ and also seems to now, after twenty-two years of being a parent and four years of having a son too disgusted with him and scared of him to visit after moving out, have realised that  _ maybe,  _ just maybe, his parenting style wasn’t the best.

That maybe a parenting style that taught a kid to flinch near-constantly while playing basketball because normally when someone throws something at him it’s not a ball, that had him so thoroughly convinced of his own worthlessness that he jumped at the chance to receive any scrap of affection even at the cost of his own wellbeing, that created and fostered an environment where his own mother  _ murdered  _ him, was a bit not good.

Charlotte leans forward and whispers to him, “So what are you going to do about the sitcom now?”

“Hell if I know,” he answers grimly, burying his face in his hands. “I mean, I don’t want all of the work to be for nothing, but -- I  _ can’t  _ do it without BJ.”

He runs a hand through his hair and takes a deep breath and wonders  _ why  _ he let this happen. He thinks back to that afternoon in his office, and why he didn’t just  _ grab  _ BoJack then and tell him he wasn’t going anywhere until he explained what the hell he was so upset about. Would that have worked? Or would he have just thought up a convincing lie, or maybe used force to get away. BoJack was known for being open about his vulnerabilities, and it felt like every other thing that came out of his mouth was some self-deprecating quip, but he was never actually  _ vulnerable,  _ never really willing to treat himself or his problems  _ seriously. _

Perhaps Herb should have realised that he wasn’t used to people taking his problems seriously.

Or perhaps he should have realised that there was something a little  _ off  _ about how  _ easy  _ it was to make him flinch or raise his hands in a defensive position like he expected to get hit, and how he would always change the subject so quick whenever asked about his family, and the most  _ horrific  _ childhood events he would mention offhandedly in a tone that made it hard to tell if he was joking before laughing it off and finding a convenient distraction.

Herb takes another deep breath and curses his own relentless optimism. It was so  _ easy  _ to tell himself that BoJack was  _ fine,  _ that maybe he seemed a little  _ off  _ sometimes and maybe he got the vague sense of  _ something going on  _ behind those eyes and that white diamond, but it was all  _ fine,  _ it was probably nothing, and really, there was no point in stressing about it.

_ God  _ knows he’s stressing about it now. 

He doubts he’ll ever forgive himself for not doing  _ something  _ when he had a chance. Because, well, it  _ is  _ at least partially his fault. He could have noticed the signs before it was too late. When he first got the call, that he was  _ dead,  _ he can’t remember feeling anything but shock and disbelief, and the cause of death was even more sickening. But now, he can see the red flags that he ignored and dismissed, that should have clued him in to the situation.

He should have known. The signs, after all, were all around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I noticed there was a small trend (read: 2 fics) of exploring the "I haven't been underwater since my mom tried to drown me when I was 22" joke and I thought i'd jump on the bandwagon. and by "bandwagon" I mean like, two wheels tied together with duct tape. (I kind of stalk the fandom tag on this site because it's my special interest)
> 
> for anyone who's curious, part 2 of this fic is going to be from Butterscotch's point of view and focus mainly on the eulogy


	2. Churro Free

He clears his throat nervously. Everyone stares at him expectantly. He barely knows any of them -- he knows his own relatives, and he could vaguely label a pair of horses as  _ the in-laws  _ if asked, but all of BoJack’s friends are completely unfamiliar to him. He dusts down his suit, and starts talking.

“So I stopped at a  _ Jack in the Box _ on the way here, and the girl behind the counter said, ‘Hiya! Are you having an  _ awesome  _ day?’ Not, ‘How are you doing today?’ No. ‘Are you having an  _ awesome _ day?’ Which is pretty… shitty, because it puts the onus on me to disagree with her, like if I’m not having an  _ awesome day, _ suddenly  _ I’m  _ the negative one.  Usually when people ask how I’m doing, the real answer is I’m doing shitty, but I can’t say I’m doing shitty because I don’t even have a good reason to be doing shitty. So if I say, ‘I’m doing shitty,’ then they say, ‘Why? What’s wrong?’ And I have to be like, ‘I don’t know, all of it?’ So instead, when people ask how I’m doing, I usually just give them the finger and tell them to get lost.”

He holds up his middle finger and mimes the words, then continues. “But when this girl at the  _ Jack in the Box _ asked me if I was having an  _ awesome  _ day, I thought, ‘Well, today I’m actually allowed to feel shitty.’ Today I have a good reason, so I said to her, ‘Well, my wife murdered my son,’ and she just sort of stared at me in disbelief. And then I’m just staring at her too, not knowing what to say, and then I just started laughing because I was nervous, and she thought it was all a joke, and meanwhile, there’s a line of people forming behind me who are all giving me these real judgy looks because I just made a joke about my wife murdering my son with a complete stranger.

“So then she takes my order. And the thing is, I always order the same thing there. But normally I have to order an extra churro because my idiot son gets all whiny if I don’t. This time I didn’t, so I ordered it without a churro. And as I’m leaving, I think, ‘I just got something churro free because my son died.’ No one ever tells you that when your son dies, you get to order things churro free.”

The crowd murmurs. He clears his throat. 

“Anyway, I’m sorry, that’s not part of the…” He clears his throat. “All right. Okay, here we go. Let’s do this. Here I am, Butterscotch Horseman, doing a eulogy, let’s go. Hey, piano man, can I get a, like, an organ flourish?” Silence. “Well, that sucks. I guess my son should have been an  _ organ _ donor!” There’s a rimshot. “...Seriously?" He clears his throat again. " BoJack Horseman, who was he? What was his deal? Well, he was a horse. Uh, he was born in 1964. He died in 1986. One time, he went to a parade, and one time, he smoked an  _ entire pack of cigarettes _ in one long hour. My wife forced him to do it. Truly a remarkable man.  Lived a full life, that man. Just,” He gestures vaguely. “all the way to the end, which is, uh, now I guess. Really makes you think, though, huh? Life, right? Goes by, stuff happens. Then you die. Okay, well that’s my time, you’ve been great! Tip your waitress! No, I’m just kidding around, there’s no waitress. But seriously, that’s all I have to say about my son. No point beating a dead horse, right? So…”

He inhales sharply. “Now what? I don’t know. BoJack, you got any ideas?” He looks over at the coffin. “Anything? BoJack? No? Nothing to contribute? Knock once if I was a good dad.” He turns back to the audience. “Can I just say how amazing it is to be in a room with my son, and I can just talk and talk without him interrupting me to ask some bullshit question, like ‘what’s for dinner?’ or ‘can I join the school choir’?” He looks back over at the coffin. “Hey, BoJack, knock once if you want to know what’s for dinner and if you can join the school choir.” Silence. “No? You sure? I mean, I know I would get angry at you for asking me that shit, but I don’t want you to just  _ ignore  _ me either.” There’s a longer silence. “Eh, your funeral.

“Sorry about the open casket, by the way.” He faces the audience. “He wanted a closed casket, but uh, you know, he’s dead now, so who cares what he wanted? No, that sounds bad. I’m sorry. I-I think that if he’d known who would kill him and how he’d look, he’d want everyone to see what his mother did. See? Look at him.  Kinda like a pissed-off toy dinosaur. The coroner couldn’t get his eyes closed, so now his face is forever frozen in a mask of tremendous horror and anguish. Or as my son called it, Tuesday! Tuesday! BoJack called it Tuesday.”

A deer woman exits the room.

“Hey, BoJack, what did you think of that joke? You like that? You never did care for my comedy.” He clears his throat. “Here’s a story. When BoJack was a teenager, he was working on this comedy routine for his high school, but he was really upset about it. First he was upset because he didn’t get his stupid-ass jacket, and then he was upset because a kid in his class called him fat. And that turned into a whole thing, you know, constantly whining about how  _ fat  _ he felt and begging us to help him lose weight. Except, here’s the dumb thing, his mother offered him some pills, and he was too pussy to take them. Then one day, he woke up really early and had to make his own coffee, and he couldn’t get it to taste like it did usually, so when his mom woke up, he asked him. She explained that she used weight loss pills in the coffee, until he was ready to take them himself. And he wasn’t mad, because even though she didn’t know how to say it, he knew this meant that she loved him. Now  _ that’s  _ a good story about my son. 

“It’s not true, but it’s a good story, right? . I remember when I first found out about the pills, thinking,  _ ‘That’s _ the kind of story I want to tell about my son when he dies.’ But the story doesn’t end up as something I could say at a funeral. When BoJack found out about the pills, what he  _ actually  _ did was freak out and pick a fight with his mom, which I had to break up, and then try to use the pills to kill himself. He, uh… he tried to do that a lot when he was a kid.  I mean, it wasn’t  _ our  _ fault. Like, I know you could, uh, you might think it was because of us, that maybe we didn’t treat him well, what with the whole mom-murdering-her-son thing, but, well -- you didn’t  _ know  _ him, you see. BoJack Horseman was not a good kid. He was, he, he couldn’t  _ do  _ anything, and, well, we made  _ so  _ many sacrifices to keep him alive, and he -- he wasn’t even going to  _ do  _ anything! I mean, the only plans he had for his life were some crazy sitcom idea that wouldn’t have been  _ anything. _

“We, me and his mother, we could have been famous. We never liked each other, but we stayed together for BoJack, and if I’d been single, I could have finished my book, but instead, I didn’t have time, so I’m still working on it. And we both always really hoped BoJack would end up being famous, to make up for that. I kept waiting for that, the proof that even though my son was an incompetent kid, deep down, he would try hard enough that he would be able to do something  _ good  _ with his life. Even now, I find myself waiting.”

He looks at the coffin. “Hey, BoJack, knock once if you were going to try hard enough to do something  _ good  _ with your life.” Crickets chirp. “My son did not go  _ gentle _ into that good night. He went clawing and fighting and thrashing, hence the face. I was in the bathroom with him those last moments, and they were truly horrifying. I heard all the splashing and shit and went to see what was going on, but when I saw it I just  _ froze,  _ and I didn’t know who to help. I wanted them to explain what was going on, but neither of them could talk, because they were so out of breath, because Beatrice -- my wife -- she was exhausted trying to overpower him, and BoJack, well… Anyway, he could barely talk, but he managed to get his head above water for long enough to look me dead in the eye, and sputter out the word,  _ ‘Bottle!’” _

He takes a swig of his drink. “That’s the last thing he said to me. ‘Bottle.’ Not a beg for help, just an  _ accusation _ . ‘You’re an alcoholic. Keep hitting the bottle. That’s all you can do.’ Let me tell you, it’s a weird thing to feel as your son is being murdered, that he’s using his last breath to accuse you or being an alcoholic. It’s an odd realization that maybe you  _ are  _ an alcoholic, and maybe that’s why your kid had such a messed up life. And it doesn’t feel like mean, to finally be accused of that. It feels  _ relieving _ , like, ‘You don’t have to keep hiding from me, I know who you are.’

“I was prepared for him to beg. I was sure that he would beg me to fight her off, to help him, and I’d save him, and then he’d  _ finally  _ understand that I was a good dad all along and be grateful—all that I was ready for. I was not ready for ‘bottle’. Only my son would be lousy enough to swipe me with an accusation on his way out.” He frowns.  _ “But _ maybe I’m giving him too much credit. Maybe it wasn’t about accusing. Maybe it was a… maybe it was a ‘bottle’ like, uh,  _ ‘bottle’. _ Like, ‘why are you just standing there, get me a goddamn drink?’  _ That’s _ more my son’s speed.  Or maybe he just literally meant ‘Bottle. You are holding a bottle, and I am aware of that.’ He was pretty out of it at the end, so maybe it’s dumb to try to attribute it to anything.”

Someone sighs.

“You know, I’m actually a very famous author. Well, I haven’t published the book yet, but I’m getting there. And I remember one time, I got BoJack to read it, and he asked me, ‘Hey, um, you know that chapter where the horse has to give Johnathan a pep talk after he realises he’s too old to find love? That scene describes the horse as having black hair, but in the first scene where he’s introduced, it’s brown. Was that because you forgot what colour his hair was meant to be?’ And I didn’t want to admit that it was, so I said, ‘No, it was because the book was making a statement about the fluctuant subjectivity of memory and how even two people can experience the same moment in entirely different ways.’

“And maybe this is like that horse’s mane. Maybe I’m only trying to find all these alternate explanations so I don’t have to admit I might be an alcoholic. Which is dumb, because I’m  _ not  _ an alcoholic. See, I can stop drinking at any time!” As evidence of this, he steps down from the podium and puts his drink in a chair. Someone else puts it in the bin for him.

“Anyway,” he continues. “As I said, uh, BoJack was the only reason my wife and I stayed together for so long. I’m not gonna lie, I cheated on her a lot. I’d like to tell myself it was because I knew she was a murderer, but, well… I wasn’t exactly nice to BoJack. I gave him a lot of, uh, tough love. Except I didn’t love him. But, it’s not my fault! You should have met him, he was  _ impossible  _ to love.  I met Beatrice at her debutante party, in 1963. We were meant to be just, you know, a one-night stand, but … things happen. I shouldn’t have been tied down to her, but it was all  _ his  _ fault, for being born. And we kept going with him, but only because we wanted him to succeed. Honestly, if I’d known he wouldn’t have lived to see his thirties, I probably would have just killed him when he was a kid.”

The crowd murmurs in disgust.

“And maybe then I would go to _ Jack in the Box. _ Maybe I could have ordered something churro free. Or maybe not. It would’ve been nice to have something to show for being the father of BoJack Horseman. If I’d killed him when he was young, Beatrice could have given the eulogy. We actually, uh, we actually planned it out a little, because we didn’t have that much faith in him, you know? Don’t get me wrong, we  _ tried  _ to get him to stop trying to off himself, but we made plans for just in case he succeeded. My entire life I never heard her say a kind word to  _ or _ about our son, but at his funeral she would say, ‘My son is dead, and everything is worse now.’

“‘My son is dead, and everything is worse now.’ I don’t know why she would say that. Maybe she felt like that’s the kind of thing you’re supposed to say at a funeral. Maybe she hoped one day someone would say that about her. ‘My wife is dead, and everything is worse now.’ Or maybe she knew that I had frittered away all her inheritance, and replaced it with crippling debt, and now her last chance was BoJack being rich and famous. ‘Bad news, you lost a son, but don’t worry, you also lost the house!’ Maybe Beatrice knew BoJack was her last chance. Maybe that’s what she meant by ‘everything is worse now.’” He turns to the coffin. “Hey BoJack, do you think that’s what she meant?”

He’s desperate for a drink, so he steps down from the podium and grabs his bottle from a chair. “I gotta say, I’m really carrying this double act. At least with Penn and Teller, the quiet one does card tricks. Hey, piano man, when I say something funny to my son, how about you give me one of those rimshots?” A rimshot plays. “Yeah, but not now. When I say something funny. Like, okay. What’s the difference between my son and a disruptive expulsion of germs? One’s a coughin’ fit and the other fits a coffin!” Silence. “That’s an example of a funny thing.”

There’s a rimshot.

“Thank you. Let’s try again. Hey, BoJack. What’s the difference between my son and a bunch of Easter eggs? One gets carried in a basket, the other gets buried in a casket!” Rimshot. “Ready for one more? Last one. What’s the difference between a first-year lit major and my son, BoJack Horseman? One is decently read, and the other’s a  _ stupid piece of shit!” _

Someone gasps.

“Yeah, might have gone a little too far with that one. That one might’ve been a little too ‘my son’s a stupid piece of shit’ for the room. I’m sorry, BoJack. You’re not a stupid piece of shit. You  _ were _ a stupid piece of shit… and now you’re dead.”

A woman sighs in the audience. 

“You know, the first time BoJack ever performed in front of an audience, it actually was, uh, with my wife. She used to put on these shows with her supper club in the living room and she used to make BoJack, she used to make him sing  _ The Lollipop Song.  _ Those parties, they were really something. There were skits and magic acts, and ethnically insensitive vaudeville routines, and the  _ big _ finale was always a dance my wife did. She had this beautiful dress that she only brought out for these parties, and she did this incredible number. It was so beautiful and sad.

“I hated the parties. I’d lock myself in the study, and bang on the walls for the idiots to keep it down, but I always came out to see Beatrice dance. I’d linger in the doorway, scotch in hand, and watch in awe, as this cynical, despicable woman I married… took flight.”

He takes a sip. “You know, now that I think about it, BoJack was probably a child who was completely terrified of both his parents. But I was always aware that this moment of grace, it meant something. We understood each other in a way. Me and my wife and my kid, as screwed up as we all were, we did understand each other. My son, he knew what it’s like to feel your entire life like you’re drowning, with the exception of these moments, these very rare, brief instances, in which you suddenly remember… you can swim.  But then again, mostly not. Mostly you’re drowning. He understood that, too. And he recognized that I understood it. And Beatrice. All three of us were drowning, and we didn’t know how to save each other, but there was an understanding that we were all drowning together. And I would like to think that that’s what he meant when we were in the bathroom and he pointed out that I was an alcoholic.

“You know, the weird thing about your kid being dead is it means that you don’t know if you’re next, or if some other way younger person’s gonna die before you do. I mean, you know, obviously it’s not like it’s  _ totally  _ down to chance. It’s really easy to kill old people. And you would think that knowing that would make old people more adventurous, and kind, and forgiving. But it makes us small, and stupid, and petty.  If there’s one thing I want to do before I die, it’s finish my book. It hasn’t come out yet, but it’s already getting Emmy buzz. Oh, speaking of buzz…” He takes another sip. “I know it’s bad to drink in the morning but my days are so screwed up now that I’m taking time off work, I don’t even know what morning means anymore. There’s a joke in there somewhere, about a guy who’s been to so many funerals, he doesn’t even know what mourning means anymore. Let you guys figure that one out for yourselves.”

He gulps.

“Anyway, you know what I thought, when I saw my wife drowning my son and I went into panic mode? The only thing that my stupid brain could come up with before he died? ‘Won’t he be sorry.’ Cool thought, brain.” There’s a rimshot. “No, that wasn’t… would you just… dial it back, all right?  I don’t even know what I wanted him to be sorry for. I mean, I know he ruined our lives, but -- he didn’t choose it, you know? He never asked to be born. Matter of fact, he asked to be  _ un-born  _ several times.” Silence. “That was a joke about my son’s repeated suicide attempts that were probably at least partially my fault. 

“I’m gonna be a famous author. Seriously, though, hold your applause.” There’s a short pause. “Well held. Anyway, I ended chapter fifty or something really well -- I tied up all the loose ends, it was really good. And my wife asked me if I was gonna finally get it published now. But I didn’t want to finish it there, because I wanted to show what happened  _ after  _ everyone had their happy ending. Except, I couldn’t make a whole chapter out of just fluffy epilogue shit, so I added more problems, and then I had to keep it going until that got resolved. 

“BoJack thought he was going to be a sitcom actor, but I wanted him to be an author. Maybe we should have swapped. You can’t have happy endings in sitcoms, not really, because, if everyone’s happy, the show would be over, and above all else, the show… has to keep going. There’s always more show. And you can call my book dumb, or bad, or unrealistic, but there is  _ nothing  _ more realistic than that. You never get a happy ending, ‘cause there’s always more problems.” He looks at his son’s corpse. “I guess until there isn’t.”

He forces a chuckle. The deer woman and the human with the beard re-enter the room.

“BoJack would hate it if he knew that I spent so much time at his funeral talking about my work-in-progress novel. Or maybe he’d think it’s his fault, for not giving me reason to respect him. Who knows? Anyway, I’m not one for speeches. My wife was always going to give the speech if this happened, but... I’m not gonna stand up here and pretend I ever understood how BoJack was meant to please me, even though so much of his short life has probably been wasted in vain attempts to figure it out. And now we’re never going to know, because his mother drowned him in her bathtub.  But I keep going back to that moment in the bathroom when he looked at me, and he was gesturing frantically, you know? At the mirror, and the soap, and the shampoo…”

His eyes widen. His face falls.

“The shampoo  _ bottles.  _ Jesus Christ, that was the closest thing we had to a weapon. He was just asking me to fight her off so she didn’t kill him. My son died, and the only good thing that happened was that I got to order something churro free. You know the shittiest thing about all of this? Is when I used to get BoJack that stupid churro, that small act of kindness showed more compassion than I gave him for his entire goddamn life. Like, how hard is it to do something nice for a person? I ruined your life. You were my son! All you had was us!”

He inhales sharply. 

“I, I think it’s just sinking in now. That I  _ ruined  _ him. I probably traumatised the shit out of him, you know? You know what it’s like? It’s like my book. I spent my entire life on that book, hoping that it would get better, and it never did. It had all the right pieces, but it just—it couldn’t put them together. And now I’m only just realising, that was  _ my  _ fault, and now it’s too late to get back that time I wasted.  _ That’s  _ what losing a son is like. It’s like my book.  Suddenly, you realize there’s no magical point where they tick all the boxes and do all the right things, and that makes you happy and that makes you love them, and you stop abusing them. As long as they were alive, even though you’d never admit it, part of you, the  _ stupidest goddamn  _ part of you, was still holding on to that chance. And you didn’t even realize it until that chance went away.”

He takes a deep breath.

“My son is dead, and everything is worse now, because now I know I will never have a son who trusts me enough that he can look at me from across a room and say, ‘Hey dad, can you get me a drink?’ But I guess it’s good to know. It’s good to know that I made him scared, and I should be feeling guilty for that. No, it’s good to know that I ruined my son’s life. And I know that now and it’s good. It’s good that I know that. So… it’s good my son is dead.”

He gulps, then sighs. “Well. No point beating a dead horse. BoJack Horseman was born in 1964, and he died in 1986, and I have no idea… what he was meant to do. Unless he was just meant to do what I do...” He dramatically takes a swig from his drink. “And drink to numb the pain.”

“That’s my drink,” says the human with the beard.

He looks down at the drink. “...Oh shit, it is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know, the bottle/shampoo bottle twist is kinda weak compared to the icu/I see you one in canon. I had plans for bojack to say different last words which would end in a different twist but I had to change it because recent events would have made it pretty insensitive.


End file.
